Welcome & News

We are now into the final year of the MEDINE2 project, with our finish date being the 30th September 2012. In the forthcoming months we will have many tasks to finalise to ensure successful completion of the project. I would urge you to engage fully with work package leaders and the coordinating office in all activities.

This years AMEE Conference in Vienna saw a good deal of MEDINE2-related activity. There were a number of presentations and workshops on the outputs of the Network. In additional Work packages 3, 5, 6 and 7 held team meetings. The overall profile of the Network appeared much higher than in previous years. There is clearly considerable interest in our work among the wider medical education community in Europe and beyond. We are very grateful to AMEE for the use of rooms and for facilitating our work during the conference.

Looking ahead, the plan is that we will hold two major meetings of the MEDINE2 Network during the final year of operation, in 2012. The first meeting will be in Bordeaux, France. The dates will be 26 and 27 April 2012. Rather than a full General Partners Meeting, this will be effectively a combined Work package meeting, using the funding allocated for Work package meetings during 2012. We will be sending further information about the meeting in the next few weeks and updating the website. This will really be the final opportunity to ensure that the various deliverables attached to each Work package are on schedule and ready to be delivered. We have informed the ECTS MA group about this meeting and it seems likely that they will, again, hold their annual clearing house meeting after the close of the MEDINE2 meeting. This will be confirmed as soon as possible.

Arranging the meetings in this way will allow us to have a final, round-up General Partners Meeting in the autumn. This will be held in Edinburgh on 13 and 14 September 2012. This will clearly be a key event when we will pull together the various strands of work and formulate some major conclusions for submission to the European Commission. Because this meeting will be very close to the end of the eligible period of the grant, it will be very important that the organisation is very tight and that things like timesheets and expenses claims are submitted immediately after the meeting. This additional time pressure is the main reason that we have chosen to hold the meeting in the coordinating centre of Edinburgh.

Finally, a word about surveys. European wide surveys are a major component of the work of MEDINE2, building on successful work in the setting of the original MEDINE Network. At present, all of the work packages have active on-line surveys. Details are on the website. At the moment, response rates are far below what we would regard as desirable for almost all of the surveys. Can I please ask you to look at these surveys, complete them yourself and if at all possible forward them to relevant individuals in your institution or in your country who you think may be willing to take the time to fill them in. Taken together, these surveys represent a really important opportunity for us to influence the future of medical education in Europe. I would be extremely grateful for your help and cooperation.

I very much hope that we can look forward to seeing you in Bordeaux and Edinburgh next year.

Professor Allan Cumming

University of Edinburgh

Coordinator, MEDINE2 Network

Work packages 1 and 2 will meet later this week in Vienna to further develop their activities and deliverables. Those who are members of these work packages will have received information regarding this meeting, and can log into the Members Area for detailed information relating to the meeting. The project coordinator, Prof Cumming, will also be joining the meeting and is looking forward to an active meeting!

The participants of work packages 3 and 7 held their meetings for 2011 in Vienna on the 31st of August and 1st of September. This followed the AMEE conference for 2011 during which the MEDINE2 project was discussed on many occasions. A total of 28 participants joined the work package meetings which were kindly hosted by the Medical University of Vienna. Throughout the two days, the groups held important discussions and made progress with their activities. WP3 are currently developing their Tuning materials and will be taking these to the next step in the coming months. WP7 discussed their survey, models of best practice and promotional materials. Further documents and information on the meetings can be found in the Members Area for work package participants.